


Prometheus

by Kirschli_Kuchen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Multi, Other, elements AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirschli_Kuchen/pseuds/Kirschli_Kuchen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is in a vacuum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prometheus

Grantaire is in a vacuum.

Probably for convenience or something. Should they ever need him again. A vacuum in space would otherwise be a bit redundant. 

They think he’s helpless here, having to exert all his concentration on just keeping his pocket of air from dispensing. They don’t know what four years do to you. 

At first he’s all concentrated on his immediate surroundings, knows every molecule in his little bubble of air by name. He curls around himself in a manner to keep everything as small as possible, the area to attack a fraction of what it could be. 

 

At the end of the first year he feels a faint stirring.

He dismisses it without a thought as one of many. A year in absolute isolation over-sensitises. Makes up for the absence of stimuli by creating new ones. False ones. Lies.

The utter absence nearly turns him mad. It makes him scream in his overused skull until his metaphorical throat runs scarred and hoarse. Until there’s tears trekking down in his head because his body left him for stasis after the first few months of disuse and while he’s managed to get his mind around working on life sustention in one partition while the other part is off nancy drewing who knows where, waking his body from its slumber could lead to complications he really doesn’t want to deal with. 

At the cusp of his madness he reaches out with all the might he can spare and his mind replies with hopeful stirrings that end up being all in his imagination after all.

After a while he ends up dismissing and denying every single one of them.

 

It isn’t until a few months later that he’s curious enough again to reach out. He always was a damned fool. 

So he sends out his tendrils of thought soaring through the endless vacuum of space hoping beyond hope to find something on its journey. Be it earth or just a little space station tuckering harmlessly through the void. Anything to take his mind off of itself. 

In the end what he finds is neither. 

 

Another month or so later finds him able to make anything of the feeling of the other space at the end of the line. 

It’s a square room about as big as he imagines his to be. There is a unit procuring blessedly solid air for it starkly unlike his where any he could try to produce would be sucked out in the blink of an eye again only leaving him even more tired than before. Curiously there is not much more to the room but a single source of breathing. He reaches deep and finds no discernable door or window in the cube. No discernable source of drink or food.

He prods and nags at the information until it hits him like a brick.

There are others like him.

 

It takes him some time and some very jarring and dangerous self testing attempts to work out how air swings to replicate sound. Once he has it down however is where the really hard part starts. He has to make the air swing miles and miles away from his person. Something he’s never done before.

It’s a slow process trying to speak to the molecules and make them listen. Trying to first get them to swing one at the time then another. But if Grantaire has one thing in spades right now it’s time and he’d be damned if he gave up trying when he’s this close. 

At the end of the second year he can do it. 

 

“Aaaaaaa-”

 

“Eeeeeeee-”

 

“Nnnmmmmmm-”

 

“-eeeeeyyyy-”

 

“Hey,”

 

“Hello?”

 

“Ping,”

 

“Ping,”

 

“Ping!”

 

“Ping!”

“Shut up,”

“Ah, you responded!”

“…”

“Don’t go all silent on me again!”

“…”

“Hey! Answer me shithead!”

“You don’t exist. None of what I’m hearing does,”

“Yeah, right. You know normally I’d be on your side, can’t even–”

“What?”

 

“Sorry, blacked out for a bit there,”

“Go away,”

“Nope, no chance in hell.”

“Already there, so git,”

“Yeah, no,”

“…”

“I’m Grantaire. Who are you?”

“What?”

“I’m no magician so I can’t just suddenly procure an eye through the air you’re sitting in. You’ll have to meet me halfway. Tell me: Who are you?”

“No,”

“Oh, you pure and utter–”

“…”

 

“Don’t leave…”

 

“Sorry again, have to remember not to scream too much,”

A sob.

“…”

Another one. 

“Shit,”

Sniffling. 

“Shit fuck. Are you alright?”

Another broken sob. 

“Hey don’t cry. Fuck, fuck, fuck,”

Tears moisturising the air.

“… Should I-. Should I leave you alone right now?”

“No!”

“Alright, sweetheart. What can I do for you,”

Broken, “Stay,”

“Okay,”

Grantaire begins to hum.

Eventually the breathing evens out.

 

“Soooooo, you wanna tell me now who you are?”

“I’m Combeferre,”

“Sweet, man-”

“This is ridiculous. I know you’re not here but still I’m talking to you,”

“Hey, hey. Just slow down a second. You should be able feel me back if you concentrate enough,”

“Yeah, right,”

“A nonbeliever in these halls! Okay, I’ll tell you the direction and you’ll just try as hard as you want. Worst case you’ll find nothing and that’s that. What have you got to lose?”

“Will you finally leave me alone when I don’t find you?”

“Scout’s honour,”

A snort.

“Vocalise continuously and turn to your left until I tell you to stop,”

“Aaaaaaaaaaa-”

“Stop,”

Silence.

Grantaire waits.

 

“Oh,”

 

After a month they still haven’t really gotten anywhere. They talked. Oh how they talked and talked until Grantaire was too tired to continue and Combeferre only had the reassuring rush of his blood as background noise. In his idle hours Combeferre worked on proving their hypothesis: that they were all locked in the furthest away from where they could do anything. So there had to be at least two others out there in space with them. 

Combeferre sends his thoughts soaring through the void; Grantaire a point of reference for the approximate orbit of his search. 

For another month he finds nothing.

 

Grantaire reaches out because while Combeferre can make his heart rate pick up that’s not a really good starter for a conversation. It gets harder the further away the person is but giving up is not really an option. 

 

They find Jehan who latches on to them without any proof that they are real. Grantaire spends his time mostly talking him down from the insular madness that has taken hold so much worse of one so openly optimistic. Combeferre sets to work finding hopefully the last one in the vast vacuum of space around them using the new points of data in his calculations. 

 

By the end of the third year they are four.

Feuilly isn’t as accepting as Jehan but a slight nosebleed curtsy of Combeferre wins him over. 

Grantaire is still the only open two way channel of conversation between them all. They’d agreed that using Combeferre as a two way could all too easily lead to injuries but one way communication to him would be easy. Jehan and Feuilly both don’t really lend themselves for the task. However they could scour the void for Earth. 

 

Six months pass between them as Grantaire keeps them sane, Combeferre is searching for others in space and Feuilly and Jehan are searching for their home. 

Then Combeferre heaves and throws up. 

It’s a queer thought after years of searching solitarily that others would be searching for them, too. 

It was also a lucky break that Courfeyrac would always seek out Combeferre first because Grantaire would have lost himself in the sensation and that wouldn’t have helped them any. 

They keep their further correspondence strictly to Grantaire.

Courfeyrac tells them excitedly that most of them on Earth are present and accounted for. With the exception of them only Musichetta, Joly and Bossuet are still missing and that presumably only because they’re kept on the other side of the planet.

“Too much electro-static interference in the middle of the Earth, you know?”

Bahorel is kept relatively close to him, their abilities overlapping so intimately it wouldn’t be economical to keep them too far apart. 

Enjolras is another story altogether. While they’re all kept deep underground Enjolras is probably the furthest point away from them they could make him. For understandable reasons they could neither keep cameras nor electrical lights in for Bahorel and Courfeyrac’s supervision so they have oil lamps on the walls and two guards to keep them company. That really wouldn’t have mixed well with Enjolras at all.

He finds other ways to rebel. A spark in a draught can still cause a forest fire after all. There’s leagues and leagues between rebellion and revolution of course but that never stopped him.

 

They hatch a plan over the next year. 

It’s all very meticulous. One wrong step and all of them in space would be dead and nobody wants to see that nor the consequences thereof. 

Grantaire gets tired less and less in the relay but there’s still so much to do and having only one comm line is pretty shitty when there’s seven people communicating. 

With a heavy heart they opt to pass on local conversations to respectively Combeferre and Courfeyrac while leaving Grantaire mostly for long distance. He doesn’t mind.

 

The timing has to be just right. Combeferre – with the help of Enjolras and Courfeyrac – had calculated the approximate point in time where their little space cubicles would line up perfectly. Feuilly and Jehan had honed their skill to grab on and hopefully hold for as long as was needed. Bahorel had also trained like a madman to give assistance to the two. Grantaire used the time to become familiar with the molecules in the other’s room. 

The perfect time is six months later, at the end of the fourth year.


End file.
